Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie

by G.M. Malliet

For years now, my husband and I have talked about leaving, moving away, just packing up and going, like the footloose hippies we are.

That was a joke. The last thing you'd find either of us doing is packing a knapsack and suddenly heading out in some devil-may-care fashion for the Wild West. We'd need to check the GPS first for hotels, museums, hospitals, coffee shops, shopping areas, and all-night diners.

We are planners. We are researchers. We are ditherers, in fact, and the Internet has given us the excuse to ponder our options endlessly. The pros and cons of America's small towns and large cities? A spreadsheet waiting to be born. Forbes Magazine with its endless "Best Places to Live" articles is pretty much a nightmare for people like us. Their World's Best Places to Live analysis sparked endless debate on passports, visas, housing, exchange rates, political climate, and so on.

With the whole world to choose from, how could we ever narrow it down?

A traffic jam where we actually live is often the catalyst for these wishful-dreaming discussions. We are on the outskirts of DC, which means we basically live in a parking lot with a roof. An expensive parking lot. We don't have a dog, much as we want one or two, because a) we travel a lot and b) we don't have space on the patio for a dog to run. We don't have space on the patio for a hamster to run. A garden where we grow our own food (another fantasy) is out of the question. It is truly bad some days: We feel hemmed in, and the thought of selling up for a few acres, an apple orchard, and a houseful of pets is very tempting. Heck, we could even raise goats and sell goat cheese! If only we had a clue how to do that!

When we do move away, I strongly suspect it will be to another urban setting, albeit a smaller and more manageable one. Unless I switch gears entirely and become a nature writer, which would be a sad, sad effort, because I always have to ask other people the names of trees and things, and I can barely tell a squirrel from a chipmunk. No, it would be another urban setting because I need to look out my window, as I just did, and see people repairing the neighbor's chimney. People talking, walking, laughing, quarreling. People doing things that I can write about.

My real fear is that if you stuck me too far out in the suburbs, in the country, or in a house on the prairie, I would not produce The Story of a Fierce Bad Rabbit or Little House on the Prairie. I would instead go mad, ever so slowly, like Stephen King's Jack in the Overlook Hotel. "All work and no play," endlessly repeated, formatted in every possible font and color that Microsoft sends.

But the escape fantasy--the longing for a Thoreau-like house in the woods (or by the ocean, even better)--never quite leaves. It is a common fantasy among authors, I think. As much as we know ourselves, as much as we know it would not (in my case) work out, the desire to find some perfect place to write is always there.

I know some MI authors are in fairly remote circumstances, so it must suit you. You're probably not afraid of bears, either. Are you happy there, or are you dreaming of finding a spot where you can choke on exhaust fumes all day?

If Forbes would only come up with a top ten best places for writers list, we might get somewhere.

Photo of Blacktail Prairie Dogs taken from NPS.gov.
Photo of folk at Walden Pond taken from Mass.gov.

Rules of Engagement

by Nina Wright

A funny thing happened on the way to writing this blog post. I got engaged . . . to be married. Here I was, all set to blog about “unexpected guest” characters—you know, those fictional folks you don’t see coming who nonetheless show up on the page and change everything—when my significant other slipped a ring on my finger. A very nice ring, I might add.

The Unexpected Guest Character post will have to wait because my new status as fiancée has filled my head with entirely different notions. And I’m not talking about wedding plans although The Event will certainly require some forethought. Not to mention the fact that we're contemplating a move to another part of the country. No, what I’m thinking about now is the way my attitudes toward love and lust manifest in what I write.

During the years when my previous marriage—a long one gradually destroyed by his preference for booze over employment—was in decline, the women in my fiction were either leaving their husbands or coping with the death of their husbands. That includes my first teen novel and my first Whiskey Mattimoe mystery. In the years following my divorce, I wrote about women falling into passionate love with thrilling but inappropriate men. Let's just say I enjoyed the research.

My ex insisted he never saw the divorce coming. Being drunk most of the time made it hard for him to keep up. He might have got a clue if he had read Whiskey on the Rocks or Homefree, or even considered the titles. My whimsical play Cherchez Dave Robicheaux offered a big tip: the heartsick protagonist leaves her husband for a fictional character. My protagonist was more desperate than I was.

Enough about what came before. What’s happening now is that I’m engaged to a tender, funny, generous man who puts family and friends first. Although more into sports than literature, he used to be a professional speechwriter; thus, he respects my work. I met my fiancé when I wasn't looking for love, yet I knew almost immediately from our ease with each other that he was Mr. Right. Never mind that he wasn't my “type,” and I'd never written about loving a man like him.

In the movie Definitely, Maybe the hero concludes that finding the right partner may be more a matter of when than whom. Put another way, you have to be ready. I opened my heart and recognized a fine man when I met him. The rest was easy. But if I'd met my guy a couple years earlier, I doubt we would have clicked. Timing, as they say, is everything. And I'll go a step further: anything I've ever tried to force has failed, be it a relationship, a storyline, or a laugh.

Fiction is the realm where I play with my fears and fantasies. But life is where I live them, and it offers more surprises than I can make up.

Your turn. Tell us a little about the relationships, romantic or otherwise, you've built on the page . . . if you dare!

P.S. Happy Birthday, Inkspot! This blog was conceived one year ago today. Jess Lourey gets credit for thinking of it, Joe Moore for building it, Keith Raffel for scheduling it, and the rest of us for contributing essays once a month.